Kate Hudson: Blondes Have More Fun

From fame and family to a guest role on Glee, Kate Hudson has an easy elegance. Plus, watch the actress in the latest episode of The Look with Laura Brown.Photographs by Camilla Akrans. Fashion Editor: Simon Robins.

Kate Hudson: Blondes Have More Fun

Kate Hudson: Blondes Have More Fun

Kate Hudson is standing in the kitchen of her childhood home, eating chocolate ice cream to soothe a recently removed wisdom tooth, while her mother, Goldie Hawn, is remembering, "I carried her right through this door!" Kate's eight-year-old son, Ryder, is watching Spider-Man as "Go-Go" bounces (she is Goldie Hawn, after all) off to a Pilates class.

Kate is carrying herself quite nicely these days, thank you. At 33, with two young sons—Ryder, and 15-month-old Bingham, with fiancé Muse front man Matthew Bellamy—and a new energy in her career, she emanates both purpose and ease. "What am I hungry for?" she replies to a question about ambition. "Well, first of all, I'm starving, because I haven't been able to eat anything but liquid."

A cackle, and then she grabs her jaw. "But creatively I'm really looking forward to producing more, and directing. Something comedic."

She does a wonderful line in comedic, of course (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Fool's Gold, Bride Wars). This fall, Kate is guest starring on Glee, playing Lea Michele's dance teacher. (She has a studio at home, where she shakes her booty "four times a week.") "I'm friends with [Glee creator] Ryan Murphy," she explains. "He said, 'I'd love for you to come do Glee,' and I was like, 'How fun!' Now that Bing's over a year old, I'm going to start working again. So Glee is kind of perfect."

The lasting success Kate has enjoyed in the acting game has come largely from the perception that she's a sunny delight. She's often asked by reporters, "Why are you so happy?" A question that, in a moment of drollery, she characterizes as "annoying, only because it's like, Why not? You might as well try to be optimistic about things." (She can see the irony of saying this while pressing a smiley-face ice pack to her face.)

It seemed like it took an eternity for Kate to hit her 30s—she broke out in Almost Famous 12 years ago. "I shot Almost Famous at 20, and I got married [to musician Chris Robinson, Ryder's father] at 21. I had Ryder at 24 so, you know, a lot happened in my 20s. I was working a lot, and there were times that were extremely tumultuous. So 30 kind of felt like 'Oh, okay.' I had a different kind of confidence."

Easy confidence—actresses don't commonly invite writers into their home, office, bedroom, and bathroom—but this one does. While she has long had the cushions of family and fame, perhaps it's motherhood that has given Kate an extra sureness. She is effusive about her two boys. Bing, who is already kicking a soccer ball, is "very determined. Ryder and Bing are polar opposites. In order to get a smile out of Ryder, you had to work really hard when he was a baby," she recalls with a laugh. "Bing is just smiling—he's happy, he's joyous. Ryder, I knew he was going to be an artist. But Ryder is comfortable in his own skin." Her pregnancies were polar opposites too. (Although after Bing, her body is better than ever.) "Bing was a more difficult pregnancy than Ryder," she says. "Ryder was very easy; I didn't get sick or nauseous at all. With Bing I was really nauseous. He also moved around so much that I felt like I was in Aliens. He was just rockin' out."

Well, it's in his genes. The third man in Kate's life, her fiancé, Matt, is a genial fellow who's strumming away in his studio, guitar chords ricocheting around the house. The couple met backstage at a Thom Yorke concert at Coachella two and a half years ago. Kate was drawn to him right away, she says, because "he was immediately very protective and, you know, watchful." Though they come from "two very different worlds, we have similar values," she adds. "It was really interesting to meet somebody who had absolutely no connection to anything in my life, and vice versa."

But for those moments, there's Google. "I Googled him right away! And it was shocking, 'cause he was like two completely different people." Even after two months of dating, "I would still tell him, 'I look at the footage of you playing, but getting to know you, I can't connect the dots.'" She remembers the first time she saw him in concert, at a stadium in Paris. "I didn't realize what I was walking into; I was just in awe of his ability and his talent. And then to know him on the other side of it, and how sweet and simple and loving he is." She smiles. "You know how people say that when you meet somebody you love, you feel at home?"

In the end, the dots had no problem connecting. At some point the two will get married, she says, but there's no rush. "We'll do it eventually, but I want it to be right. I don't want to just do it, you know what I mean?" She and Bellamy have bought a house in London, with the intention of shuttling between there and L.A. "It's two very different lifestyles, but I feel really lucky to be able to expose the kids to both. But it takes planning, and for somebody like me who wants to fly by the seat of my pants all the time. ... I can be such a gypsy, but with the kids in school, I'm learning how to be more organized." Kate's good friend Gwyneth Paltrow has been Gooping it up for her with the London setup. "She's been my go-to about where to get things done—grocery shopping, a good mani-pedi, you know, all that." She continues, "I look up to Gwyneth and how she has been in her life. She's the real deal."

Kate's been so sporting, but her wisdom tooth is really ruining her day. She trudges off to get some ibuprofen, and then lands in her closet. It's a plethora of printed summer dresses—Etro, Rachel Zoe, Missoni—jeans, pink Céline sunglasses, and heels, lots of heels. While she is often painted as a hippie chick, she ain't doing that in flats. "I love heels," she says, gesturing to shelves full of them, and slipping her foot into studded Louboutins, rainbow-sequined "pride" Brian Atwoods, and some foxy Ferragamos with the glee of a girl trying on her mom's shoes. "I'm not a big flats person," she adds, laughing, "as you can tell."

Kate definitely has glamour rising, swearing by the power of a Balmain dress. Her favorite red-carpet look to date is the white Emilio Pucci dress she wore to the SAG Awards two years ago. "I also did a vintage Versace that was kind of totally naked for a Skeleton Key premiere. I loved that dress."

She is also the face of both Ann Taylor and Almay. For "Ann," which is currently enjoying scarf-and-sweater fetish status with fashion girls, "I wore the cutest black dress in the campaign, and I wore their scarf to the airport yesterday, and it was perfect." Sooner rather than later, she wants to create her own fashion line, filled with the type of loosely glamorous Isabel Marant—y type pieces she favors. "The things that I wear all the time, you know?"

Kate's not too shabby at applying makeup either, often doing her own face for events: "Black eyeliner all around the eye, and inside the upper eyelid." Back in the bathroom, and with the newly arrived Bing (smiling, but not currently kicking) on one hip, she forages in a half-full makeup drawer for her Almay eye-makeup-remover pads. "But, see? I don't have that much stuff." Padding around, and with Bing crawling on the floor, she muses a little more on style. "I like people who just throw stuff on 'cause they like it." But with just a little jazz. "Oh, yes! Jazz." And with that Kate shows that she's never in too much pain to pull a dancer's pose in the bathroom.